GIGA Researcher Dr. Julia Grauvogel Celebrates Success in the Leibniz Programme for Women Professors

Hamburg, 9 December 2025 – Political scientist Dr. Julia Grauvogel will receive funding in the framework of the Leibniz Programme for Women Professors. Her joint appointment as a Leibniz Professor will take place in cooperation with Leuphana University Lüneburg. The programme serves to promote the recruitment and career development of top women scholars. The decision on the part of the Leibniz Senate is also a big win for Hamburg as a centre of scholarship, demonstrating the commitment on the part of the city and the region to promoting women in scholarship.

The funding is attached to the greenlighting of a SAW project entitled “Ending External Interventions: Success, Failure and Exit Dilemmas,” which aims to investigate the influence of external interventions’ success or failure on their termination, as well as the effects seen following their withdrawal. Causes, processes, and long-term effects of the termination of sanctions, peace missions, and military operations between 1990 and 2024 will be analysed. This project will significantly strengthen the GIGA’s international scholarly agenda, given its innovative research and methods as well as the systematic integration of perspectives from the Global South. Through close cooperation with international partners in Europe, the United States, and sub-Saharan Africa, and via the creation of a new dataset, the project can contribute societally relevant stimuli to the debate around external interventions.

Julia Grauvogel is one of the leading experts in international sanctions as well as in conflict and authoritarianism research with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Her work has been published in numerous leading international journals and set new trends in sanctions termination, both in research and in practice. Aside from carrying out research, Dr. Grauvogel is also active in supporting early-career researchers, able to draw on a tremendous international network, and until 2022 served as the editor-in-chief of Africa Spectrum, one of the world’s leading journals for African Studies.

Hamburg Senator for Science, Research and Gender Equality Maryam Blumenthal: “Women are still in the minority in top scientific positions – despite excellent training and degrees. The Leibniz Programme for Women Professors is an important lever for changing this. I congratulate Dr. Grauvogel on this outstanding achievement! We need more role models like her and more initiatives like this programme. As Senator for Gender Equality and Science it is clear to me that we must continue to move forward decisively in advancing gender equality for women in science.”

GIGA President Prof. Dr. Sabine Kurtenbach: “We heartily congratulate Dr. Julia Grauvogel on this notable accomplishment and look forward to the further results of her research along with the collaboration that will take place both within the GIGA and with Leuphana University Lüneburg.”

Dr. Julia Grauvogel: “I’m so thrilled about the Leibniz funding and looking very much forward to working on the project with two leading research institutes in the Hamburg metropolitan area. Pushing forward the analysis of exit scenarios for external interventions in armed conflicts and anchoring the question of exit strategies in political and public debates is particularly meaningful to me.”

Media contact: Verena Schweiger Head of Communications Department Phone: +49 40 42825-770 [email protected]